Once a Friend, Always a Fool

Claudia was where she had been for years now: Grinding through college for a career she didn’t care about, and dealing with another boyfriend cheating on her. In that case it was with the friend that had warned her about the last guy. Why did she seem to attract guys like this? Why did the women she trusted keep betraying her?

These thoughts went through Claudia’s mind as she walked to the guidance counselor’s office. Maybe she just wanted an excuse to look back at her life so far, and try to make better decisions.

Upon entering the guidance counselor’s office however, she was struck by who was there. It was a woman with chestnut brown hair she had never met before.

“Sorry dear,” the woman said in a sophisticated British accent, “your normal guidance counselor won’t be available. But I can help you.”

“Who are you?” Claudia asked while keeping a careful distance. “I don’t-”

“Paisley dear,” Paisley answered while approaching Claudia. “Please, come take a seat. I understand you aren’t sure about your degree?”

After an awkward introduction, Claudia managed to initially have a good discussion with Paisley. Soon, they talked about how she was losing enthusiasm for her current focus on IT.

“You showed appreciation for this at first,” Paisley said. “Was it because you didn’t want to study for the tests around it? Or was it something else?”

“I realized most of my day in a job like that would be people screaming at me because something on their computer broke,” Claudia answered. “Worse, in a lot of cases they’d be the one who broke it, but getting them to admit that could put my job at risk. It just… I chose IT because it was a safe career, but I’m tired of dealing with people using me.”

“Well, you would have experience with that,” Paisley said. “But then, do you ever think it’s because you invite people to use and abuse you?”

Claudia didn’t respond at first. The question was so evidently inappropriate that it felt absurd to do so, and she was waiting for some sort of explanation for it. When none came, her response was explosive.

“What kind of question is that?” Claudia asked, her voice rising. “That is completely inappropriate for a guidance counselor. In fact, this session is over!”

Except when Claudia tried to storm out of the counselor’s office, she found herself in another place entirely…

“I understand you had a different treatment when you were younger for your condition? Shortly after you were diagnosed at fourteen?”

Max sighed before responding. “Yes. It was a drug that repressed libido, but the side effects were… horrific.”

“How bad?” Paisley asked. “It’s important to establish a baseline comparison to prior treatments. Also-”

“It made me suicidal!” Max blurted out before calming down. “Also caused me to have hair loss, a delayed puberty, and a pile of other effects I don’t want to talk about. It got so bad that even my mom gave up on it.”

“It’s important you say that Max,” Paisley said. “It shows that you trust me. Any side effects linger from the treatment?”

“No, thankfully,” Max said. “I got a lot hairier over the course of a year, among other things, because all the stuff the drug messed up came back all at once, but none of the physical side effects stuck around. The mental stuff took longer to go away, but that was more just because I had other reasons to be depressed.”

“Good,” Paisley said. “Forgive me for sounding Freudian, but I heard you bring up your mother. You implied that she had wanted you to continue the treatment despite the side effects?”

Max sighed before answering. “Yes. She says it’s because she thought it was what was best for me but I think she just hated the idea of me being a pervert.”

“What do you think changed her mind?” Paisley asked. “And do you still resent her for it?”

“She claimed it was because some of the physical side effects were life threatening,” Max said. “That may very well be true, but I often think it was just because she gave up on me being free of the condition. Of being the innocent boy she loved before. I never hated her the way…”

Max gulped before continuing. “The way I hated myself. The way I never felt like I could live up to her expectations, or my dad’s expectations.”

“You shouldn’t hate yourself Max,” Paisley said. “Not for something you have no power over.”

Paisley let Max sit with that idea for a bit. Max suspected she did this because she wanted him to stew in his thoughts, and to encourage him to talk more during their sessions.

“Besides your family, who else did you have a relationship with from this period?” Paisley asked. “Was it just you, your family, and your condition? Or was there someone else?”

“The condition made it hard but…” Max trailed off before he collected himself and continued. “There was a girl named Claudia. It wasn’t a close relationship but I think my depressed condition made me, in her eyes, trustworthy.”

“What happened to her?” Paisley asked. “You’ve never brought up Claudia before.”

“Hanna happened,” Max said. “You know the story there...”

“Alright Max, the next contestant is Claudia,” Paisley said. “Are you ready?”

“If you let me jack off again,” Max got up knowing he had lost the case for Hanna, “I’ll be as ready as I can be.”

Max once again masturbated, and while it took a little longer than last time, it was enough to clear his head. Claudia was hot enough to distract him. Granted, almost anyone with a pulse and who looked vaguely female could do that, but it was for the best to not think about that. Thinking with his dick would have catastrophic outcomes in this case.

Once again, Max entered a furnished bedroom. Claudia was sitting on the bed, looking stressed out. She looked good, but the thing that really made her someone he fantasized about was her massive, amazing ass. Even after jerking off, thinking about what he could do with that ass threatened to derail his ability to think, much less do anything about the situation at hand. Shaking himself out of it as best he could, Max set about doing a task he had already failed once: Protecting someone he knew from Harem Hotel. And in this case it was someone he once considered a dear friend.

“Claudia,” Max said, “I know this situation is bad, but you need to listen to me very carefully.”

He could already tell Claudia wanted to scream at him when she turned to face him, so he just kept going. “I can get you out of here, but you have to convince me why you should be able to leave in the next five minutes. Otherwise, I’m not going to be able to save you.”

At that point, Max stopped holding back the tears in his eyes. He knew it was manipulative, but he didn’t have a choice. He had to manipulate her so that she would believe him, and offer up the right reasons in the time they had. Well, that, and try to manipulate this audience into being more open into letting her go.

“Max, why am I here?” Claudia asked. “One second I was storming out of a guidance counselor’s office, the next I found myself here, reading this booklet about Harem Hotel, a reality show that is about making me your sex slave!”

She threw the booklet back onto the bed in disgust. “So what is this? Why am I here?”

“Paisley, my…” Max trailed off as he tried to figure out how to describe his relationship with Paisley, “former therapist, brought you here because she wanted to add you to the harem. I suspect her argument is going to be that you threw me under the bus, and because of that, you deserve to…”

“Be your sex slave,” Claudia said, in a voice that was calm but still furious. “Do you believe that?”

“Of course not Claudia,” Max said. “However, under the rules, you have to give me more reasons you don’t deserve to be here. You did throw me under the bus in regards to Hanna-”

“You were a disgusting pervert!” Claudia yelled. “Nobody made you bring porn to school.”

Max sighed as once again he had to explain his condition. “Do you know what hypersexuality is?”

“No…” Claudia answered. “I’m aware of sex addiction, as an excuse men use to cheat on women.”

“This is more serious than that,” Max said. “My body gives me a libido so high that I cannot function unless I masturbate multiple times a day. I’m sorry if that sounds like bullshit, but it’s the truth.”

Claudia looked at him skeptically. “If that was the case, then how come you were so restrained before senior year?”

“I was on drugs for it,” Max continued. “It’s why I couldn’t grow facial hair, and also why I was such a sad sack of shit all the time. When it made me want to off myself, I stopped taking them.”

“Even if I were to believe that,” Claudia’s voice softened some, “that doesn’t change the fact that you brought porn onto school grounds Max!”

“Claudia, people have to do otherwise inappropriate things for medical reasons all the time,” Max countered. “ADHD medications are often a type of amphetamine, which are stimulants like cocaine, and also pretty similar to meth. Opioids like oxycontin are often used to treat severe chronic pain. And-”

“Okay I get it!” Claudia yelled. “Master debater and master masturbator, maybe you did have a reason to have porn. And…”

Claudia trailed off as the answer she would’ve reached for wasn’t available. At that point, Max knew he was about out of time, but it seemed like for once, he had succeeded. Maybe it was because she realized that if his condition was as bad as he claimed, he genuinely needed porn on school grounds. That he needed the ability to optimize his masturbation to be as quick as possible, hence, having a variety of pornography available. Or maybe Max was just pretending that, and really, the only reason Claudia was giving him another chance is that she far too often trusted men she shouldn’t have, and this was the one time that naivete would cause her to do the right thing. Max would never find out, as he disappeared from Claudia’s life once again…

Once again, Max returned to Paisley. Once again, he was on the beach, and Paisley was reading a magazine on the beach. Unlike last time though, he recognized it as one of the magazines he read in high school.

“Very crass,” Paisley said. “Just tits, ass, and poses without any artistic merit. Can’t blame you though, you needed more immediate relief than most.”

“The hentai had a little bit more plot,” Max said. “I have recommendations if you want, but I suspect you’re a bit busy for porn.”

“Indeed I am,” Paisley chuckled. “But not always. I have every volume of porn you have ever read, and a server devoted to storing all the porn on every porn site you ever visited. I know exactly what you fantasize about, and also know the stuff that you were idly curious about, but decided was just too much. All of those things, and more, will be on the table here.”

Once again, Max was violated. It reminded him of a promise that he managed to keep, which was to never spy on women, to never become a peeping tom. He never thought he’d be on the other end of it, as his body was average, and felt too gross to ever be sexy. In response to the present violation, he decided to just meet her energy. There was no point in getting mad at someone with the power Paisley demonstrated.

“I’d hope not all of them,” Max said. “I once tried NTR on a whim, but then realized my condition humiliates me far too much to get anything out of it.”

“Oh don’t worry,” Paisley let the magazine disappear. “I know you far too well to confuse what you desire versus what you explored as a one off flight of fancy. For instance, Claudia would be an excellent choice for all the anal you’re into. But maybe it went better this time?”

The question was phrased as a taunt, but Max refused to rise to the bait.

“At the end, much better,” Max said. “She doesn’t deserve to be here.”

Not that anyone deserved to be there, but Max knew who he was debating. You can’t argue someone out of something they’re paid to do.

“A bit of regret won’t satisfy me Max,” Paisley said. “Guilt comes too easily when the actual consequences of prior behavior show up. So why should I forgive the one friend you had for throwing you under the bus?”

Max had waited patiently for Paisley to finish, summoning up every ounce of patience he had practiced from debate club, and all the self-control he had to practice with his condition. “Her only crime was believing something that was true. I did bring porn to school. She lacked context as to why, but it’s unreasonable to expect a teenage girl to behave differently. The only side of me she had known in any depth was…”

“The one hopped up on drugs,” Paisley stood up and walked over to Max. “What does it say about her that she could only like when you poisoned yourself to fit into society?”

It was more bait that Max refused to take. He knew how Paisley wanted him to see Claudia, and he wasn’t going to play into her designs.

“The person at fault then was Hanna and yours truly,” Max said. “I fucked up because I had the audacity to think that someone couldn’t break into my locker, and that they wouldn’t look at me while I was in the restroom. I was…”

“You thought those things only happened to women,” Paisley said. “You may think you’re a modern, progressive guy who wants to do right by women, but you still hold a lot of stupid double standards.”

“Perhaps,” Max said, “but it doesn’t change that Claudia wasn’t the one who did all of that, it was Hanna. A woman so stubborn that, even when presented with magic, and a place that can break the fundamental rules of reality, she cannot let go of her beliefs to save herself. Is it too much to ask then, that Hanna not claim yet another victim?”

“You’re not wrong,” Paisley stared Max in the eyes. “I might let Claudia go. But if I do, you have to accept the consequences of me doing that.”

“Is this one of those monkey paw things where she gets raped anyway?” Max managed to hold her gaze. “Because I’d say that’s not in the spirit of letting her go.”

“No Max, I don’t need to be so crude with my methods,” Paisley continued to maintain eye contact. “Claudia will be replaced. One way or another, Hanna is not going to be the only person in the harem.”

Max looked away, and thought about it. It wasn’t deep contemplation about her terms, but instead putting together how he was going to point out the absurdity of what she was asking of him.

“So you want me to be responsible for something I have no power over?” Max returned to her gaze. “I didn’t choose to kidnap these women, I didn’t choose to be here, and I definitely didn’t choose this contest. I accept I can only prevent so much suffering.”

“In that case, I will let Claudia go,” Paisley said. “Now go get ready. You have another woman to save...”